The Big Fat Summer of Love: Dr. Traci Mann

This interview really resonated with me, a yoyo dieter from childhood. Growing up in an extremely critical and very loving family, I strove to live up to my parents’ and family’s expectations. I remember being about 12 and eating a piece of cheese, and my brother saying, “Cheese is very fattening.” He loved to tease me as all big brothers do, and I thought he was just giving me a bad time. But he showed me some proof. There began my illicit affair with cheese. To this day, guilt plagues me when I eat it.
Thanks for presenting the information in your interview with Dr. Mann. I try to tell people we are born being a mesomorph, ectomorph or endomorph, but now I have some ammunition that may make more of an impact. Dr. Mann said in your interview: “For years I have been studying the science of weight loss and obesity, and the evidence shows that weight is primarily genetically determined and the extent to which people can alter it is limited. Trying to live at a weight way below one’s genetic range is a recipe for misery and failure as it basically means living as if you are biologically starving. I think it is immoral to expect people to live this way for the sole purpose of achieving a weight that happens to be what our society considers attractive at this point in time.”

After years of dieting, newbies to the world of Body Acceptance, find it very hard to wrap around the much discussed concept that, “Diets Don’t Work.” Thanks to Dr. Traci Mann of The Health and Eating Lab, however, we have hard evidence to prove such rhetoric. Dr. Mann, a widely cited expert in her field, has done copious amount of research on dieting, eating, fatness and self control and has proven, time and again, that, indeed, diets don’t work.